On this past Wednesday September 8, 2010 Google released an update to their search engine called Google Instant. You may have already noticed this in your own searches.

What is Google Instant? – When you are on Google’s website and you start typing in a search term a drop-down menu is going to appear below the search field that shows you possible search terms that you may be wanting to type in.  Some of you (Kelly) might be saying “It already did that!”.  And you are right, but wrong too. Google already did this prior to Wednesday, but it is now doing it differently. Before the words that would appear were based solely on your own search history, website history and search behavior. It also showed words after you typed in a word of your own. Now, it shows words AS you type, not after the fact. And, the words it is showing you is based on the search history and search trends of the entire country, not just your computer.

Why is Google becoming Instant? – To provide a shorter/quicker search experience for their users. By providing users with suggested search terms that other people are using around the world most likely they are the same search term you are wanting to type in, and now you don’t have to. With a simple click, or a few punches of the down arrow key and the enter key you will have picked the search term that you want and have completed your search.

Why else is Google becoming Instant? – By providing their users with easy suggestions of words to use in their search users will probably find what they are looking for quicker and with less effort of performing multiple searches or having to go to the subsequent pages of the results.  Oh, and because people are performing fewer searches in a quicker manner – it reduces Google’s use of resources and helps their bottom line. Google is getting really good at making changes to their engine that provides their users a better experience, but at the same time helping them save money.

How does Google Instant affect SEO? – First, expect some fluctuation in traffic to your websites coming from Google’s organic ranking. There is no doubt that this change will produce results for searchers who typically would have searched for a different term or phrase all together. This is affect is really teaching users how to perform better searches and eventually frequent users of Google Instant will be better searchers. This also means that websites that have been getting good traffic from one keyword might not get so much traffic from that keyword any more if the keyword is not one suggested by Google Instant. With that said, the reverse may happen too. A keyword that a website was not getting a lot of traffic from in the past might all the sudden be a super-star because it is a keyword suggested by Google Instant.

Bottom line is that Google Instant is going to change the way people search. It is going to enable them to learn to search better the first time and also enable them to search deeper into a subject by grabbing ideas from Google Instant. What that says to me is that websites are actually going to benefit more from Google Instant when it comes to SEO, it will just be from different words in some cases.

For more information on Google Instant please visit Google’s website explaining Google Instant. You may also choose to read Matt Cutt’s explanation of Google Instant’s affect on SEO. Matt Cutts is head of Google’s Webspam team. He is also a regular blogger for Google and is an outspoken public voice to the SEO world from Google.